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Published by Dave Terry
on Sunday, April 30, 2006 at 9:48 AM.

PreviousWell the time has come to return home. We had coffee with some friends at a Beijing Starbucks. But the hour flew by and we needed to head out to the airport.

It took longer than we thought and again we were lost trying to figure out where we were supposed to go to pickup a flight to U.S.A. There were signs for Hong Kong, Korea, and other Asian destinations. Just a small sign that said "Int'l" gave us a clue.

Getting through security took a long time too. Stamping VISAs and Passports, checking IDs, stripping before the security scan and then reassembling myself afterwards took more time than we calculated. We made the gate with about 30 minutes to spare. I couldn't bear the 12 hours of flight without a book to read so I ran back to a bookstore and picked up a small paperback for a mere $18. That's 125 yuan. That's what I paid in China for my North Face jacket! It's robbery. I gulped when the woman scanned the book and loudly announced the cost I'd have to pay for these few sheets of paper with some ink on them. I also bought one for Ruth and she nearly fainted at hearing the cost.

We boarded the plane and sat behind a woman who coughed the entire 12 hours. With every breath, she hacked. I thought she's pass out just from the exhaustion of it all. I finally put the ear plugs in and started my book.

Later in flight we watched our Chinese DVD movie: Turn Right Turn Left on my iBook. A little sappy but on the whole a good romance story.

We landed in Chicago at 4:30, about 10 minutes late. I was unprepared for what lay ahead.

First we had to fill out a declaration form, then go through customs, then claim our baggage, then recheck our baggage, then go through security (shoes off, laptop out, etc.), then catch a tram to our terminal, and eventually find the gate (it wasn't listed on the boarding pass).

The customs guy was a little chatty. "Oh, you were traveling with your wife to China? How was the trip? What are your occupations?" I kept thinking: "I'd love to chat and all but please just stamp the passports, we've got another plane to catch. I'll give you the blog address. You can read all about it after work." But I just smiled and said: "Yes, we had a great time. Software Architect and Medical Transcriptionist. Thanks."

We went through security but had to take our shoes off, empty our pockets, remove our belts, and separate the notebook. At the other end we had to reassemble again. It was 5:30 and our flight to Atlanta was to leave at 5:45 p.m.

Our boarding passes didn't have the gate number so we had to locate one of those TV screens and look it up. It was way down the end of the NEXT wing. This meant running down stairs, under the tarmac and then back up some stairs, and then down to the end of the wing. Ruth was running in her socks but finally put her shoes on while we were riding one of those people movers, you know, the flat escalator. She didn't have time to tie her laces and we ran on to the end of the wing, loose laces whipping behind. People gawking.

The boarding agent had just closed the door. It was 5:45 and the flight was scheduled to take off right then. But she opened it for the two sweaty bodies that begged on bended knee.

The flight to Atlanta from Chicago was bumpy. One man gave us his seat so that we could sit together in the back. I got some sleep on the previous flight from Beijing but Ruth didn't and the lack of sleep was wearing on her.

Maiko picked us up and drove us home. It was nice to see folks driving in lanes again. The cats were fine. The house was intact. Maiko took good care of things for us.

The hot shower felt good, the pressure was strong, and I didn't have to duck under the shower head. The toilet was Western. We didn't have to squat over an Asian porcelain hole in the floor. We could throw the toilet paper in the toilet and not in a waste bin beside it. And there is actually a toilet roll on the wall, we didn't have to bring our own.

Even the blow dryer cord was long enough. At our last hotel they put the foldable blow dryer in a drawer, drilled a hole for the cord in the drawer bottom, wired the plug on the end, and plugged it into the wall. They felt this was a good way to keep the dryer in place. Trouble was, I had to sit at the desk and bend over to reach the back of my head.

But those are just cosmetic things.

Ruth says she misses the childlike curiosity towards weiguoren. The Chinese people are truly curious about us, in anything we do. When we bought some flutes from a street vendor, two other guys came by to see what we were doing. In the West people would walk by and ignore us. Ruth asked the men if they were friends of the vendor. No, they were just interested in what was happening.

We also miss the people we met, their kindnesses, helpfulness, and generosity. While living in a foreign country we learned that communication is critical for daily needs. We realize that lodging, food and water were all we really needed. That and a xishoujian (clean-hand-room, the bathroom). We miss the simple view of life. Everything else is superfluous. Everything is borrowed. We can collect stuff all our life but in the end, stuff decays, breaks, rusts, gets taken, or rots. Things matter little. Memories matter. People matter. Relationships matter. Our Creator matters.

And that's the thing that struck me the most. Everyone is afraid of what is not like themselves. As I stood in the long Customs line in both China and the U.S. I think how crazy this world is. Each country distrusting the next. Blocking entry and making border crossing unpleasant, difficult, and in some cases impossible. Blue counters as far as the eye can see, stamping, checking, scanning, and filtering people of every shape and size. But we are all really the same. We all have families, relatives, friends, and companions. We are all trying to feed ourselves and our families. Sure, we love the land of their birth, who doesn't? But we don't care where a political power puts a line in the sand. I think how much different things will be when the political borders are removed and people will be allowed to freely go from country to country and get to know each other at a more personal level.

Yes, there are monsters. There are people that will not change. They feel it is their duty to destroy another's peace. But no country's blue counter or border checkpoint will be able to stop them. No government has been able to do so in the past. Why would we expect they could do it in the future?

I talked to my buddy in China. I expressed concern for China after the Olympics of 2008. Will China still be open to the West? Or will it swing back the other way? 'The horses have already left the barn' was his general feeling. Too much has occurred and China is relying on the developed nations to help it improve it's economy. China is just trying to control the rate of change. Unlike Russia, China wants to make sure the growth is more controlled. That's a good thing.

And even though I was frustrated that the hosting stie for this blog was blocked. (It was a pain to have to double post to travelblog.org so that I could observe the finished entry.) Still, I wish the U.S. would do some filtering too. For example, place restrictions on porno and violent sites. And make it harder for our young people to become entangled in trash on the Net. China is attempting to do just that. It's true, they may be heavy handed at times, blocking an entire hosting service (like blogspot.com), but in some ways I wish the West would follow.

There is much more to assess from our trip. It'll take months for us to digest it all. We look forward to returning here to review and remember all our experiences. But it's time to catch up on our sleep.

We left Beijing at 4:20 p.m. on Saturday the 29th. We flew for 12 hours and arrived in Chicago at 4:20 p.m. on Saturday the 29th. The clocks say we are in the same day, in the same hour, but our bodies tell us differently.

The bed was soft. The air was clear. The noise was gone. We slept well.

...dave
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. -Charles F. KetteringPrevious

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Published by Dave Terry
on Saturday, April 29, 2006 at 9:50 AM.

PreviousNextWe got started a little late but wanted to check out Beihei Gongyuan(North Water Park) in the center of Beijing. It's worth the visit. There are flowers and trees and rocks and a huge lake. You can rent boats or take a small "shuttle boat" from a point at the edge of the lake to the island. There are small rock clusters where you can sit and have lunch, and many did. Ruth said to me: "It's amazing how peaceful and inviting the rocks look." It was amazing how comfortable they looked. There are also larger shaded pavilions where people gather and sing and dance. In one pavilion we saw three men on harmonicas playing folk songs while woman danced with scarfs in the center. A weiguoren boy danced with his mother while the dad snapped a picture. There was an old man with a tambourine inviting others into the dance or gesturing to one of the dancing woman to do a solo jig. One woman did a kind of robot thing with her head, jerking it from side to side and gesturing mechanically with her hands.

It was 3:00 and we still hadn't eaten lunch. We always carry a few Kashi bars to hold us over but I was feeling dizzy by the time we walked the mile to Wangfujing. We found a McD's and downed a Big Mac and coke (never got our fries) and that just made matters worse. Ruth left me to veg in an indoor AC'd Starbucks. Here's the strange thing, McD's and the KFCs we went to never ran their air conditioners. It was always hot and stuffy inside. At one McD's it was unbearable as the seating area was upstairs (heat rises) and the music was blaring.

So I veged while reading my new learn to read/write Chinese book. She was gone and back with a few things within the hour.

We did a little shopping together and then met a couple in the store sitting on hand carved jet-black Chinese chairs. They spoke some English so we got to chat a little. Very nice folks. We had been looking for an American film on DVD with Chinese audio and English subtitles. They offered to show us a couple of stores. Se we walked and talked together down Wangfujing street. They asked if we had dinner and what we planned for the evening. They were just honestly pleasant people. We hated to say "Goodbye" but had arranged to meet someone else for dinner. So I took a picture and exchanged emails.

And that was our general experience in China. Always someone willing to help a foreigner out. Sure there were grumpy taxi drivers here or there but on the whole they were truly helpful. We even entertained some with our clumsy Chinese. We'd all laugh together while our driver dogged busses and pedestrians in the streets.

Tonight was Ruth's turn to select a restaurant. She picked a Morrocan style restaurant. That's right, Morrocan in China. The servers were dressed in the garb of the country and the walls had persian rugs hanging from them. She ordered lamb kabob. I just sat and had a Qingdao beer. My stomach was still doing funny things. There was a table up against the wall of about 20 people. Obviously some kind of celebration. They were doing gambei (empty cup) toasts and each person around the table took turns singing. It was beautiful Mongolian tunes. Many in the restaurant knew the tunes and would sometime mouth or sing aloud the words. It sounded like tunes I've heard Navaho Indians sing. While the singer stood, everyone around the table would clap in time and sing the choris. A young long haired Mongolian man sang so well, holding notes longer than I can hold my breath, received claps all around the restaurant when at last he finished his last note. I wish I'd had a recorder to convey the wonderful sounds we heard in our last night in Beijing. What a treat and a cultural experience.

We got back to the room after eating dinner and heard fireworks. We pulled back our hotel room curtain and watched a fireworks display just across the street. Obviously someone heard that we are leaving tomorrow and decided to give us a great send off. Such nice people here in China.

We love CCTV. Chinese Cable TV is fantastic. We watched a few shows to get sleepy. They have everything: Chinese lessons, news, sports, circus acts, and movies. If we can get it in Georgia, it would be worth installing cable.

...dave
Before you beat a dog, find out who its master is. -Chinese proverbPreviousNext

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Published by Dave Terry
on Thursday, April 27, 2006 at 7:09 PM.

PreviousNextRuth and Lynn always looked forward to breakfast to finish any Scrabble game they started the night before.

After the free breakfast buffet in our Qingdao hotel we got a ride to the airport for our flight to Beijing. We had a driver that didn't speak any English so got some language instruction. We asked him if he had any children. It's a question that everyone asks and is not considered too personal. If fact, the Chinese consider it showing personal interest. Such a question soon after meeting someone my be too personal in the west. Another common greeting I heard was: "Chila ma?" (Have you eaten?) During some of the difficult famine years the answer was often NO. Now it's almost like saying "Hello."

When we came down to our airline gate two girls at either end of a cafe were announcing in unison what was in their stores. They sounded like a computer reading a menu because of the sameness of each sentence but their voices were beautiful. It almost sounded like a song in stereo.

We made it back to the Rosedale but the room wasn't quite ready so we had a 30 yuan ($4) cup of coffee (the most we have ever spent on coffee) in the lobby and ate some Russell Stover chocolates Lynn gave us some as a parting gift. Thanks Lynn!

We dumped our bags and went to Wangfujing...again. We wanted to pick up some books and trinkets We did well in saving money so had a little left over to shop. It was late at night and the lights were perfect for pictures. I took a picture of a Catholic Church just across the street from the Wangfujing Book Store.

The U.S. dollar goes a long way in China. Don't expect to use a credit card a lot. Only at the good hotels did we use our card. Everywhere else we used cash. I just carried a folded sum in a binder clip in my front pocket. I never used coins. If we did receive coins as change in a store, we just gave them away to some folks needing help on the street.

Once Ruth bought some milk and gave it to a woman who pushed her daughter in a wheelchair. The woman was very appreciative She held her hands together and bowed several times intoning "Xiexie ni." It's so hard to pass these folks in the street without giving them something. But I never did and kind of feel guilty about it. Ruth always wanted to give away our change or our food, and she did on several occasions. Sometimes they'd follow us a long way down the street, often walking a half a city block with us, before returning to their spot. I rarely saw anyone give them anything. It's not easy to do when you consider that we can buy anything in a store and sleep in clean sheets at the hotel while these folks look as though they haven't slept anywhere but on the street. In fact, we did see several sleeping on the sidewalk using the flower bed curb as their pillow. One woman slept while her two year old played in the dirt by her head.

PreviousNextWe are kind of winding down to our last days in China. We've seen and done a lot so it seems as though we've been here a lifetime. When we browse through our pictures we don't really comprehend our faces. It all seems as thought it's someone else staring back at us, someone else that had all those experiences.

Today was just a walk on the beach. Our taxi dropped us off at the far end of the beach and we worked our way back. There was lots of activity considering it is the middle of the week. Wedding photographers were everywhere. Women in wedding gowns and men in tuxes dotted the rocky beach bent in impossible poses that looked terribly uncomfortable but I guess looked good to the photographer. Ruth and Lynn decided to try some of the poses themselves. They looked as glamerous to me as the brides so I snapped a few pictures of them. Those other photogs have nothing on me. Who on this entire beach had two beautiful models to photograph at the same time? No one, that's who.

By the way. I'm the only non-asian I saw in my entire stay of Qingdao. Everywhere I go heads turn. No doubt because of my good looks. When I stopped to sketch, people gawked. I think I'll just put a cup out on the street. I may as well make some cash at this.

We walked up the beach and through Zhongshen park. The tulips were in bloom, tulips of every color. I'd never seen anything like it since New York's Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. There were several people selling hot corn on the cob so I bought some for 2 yuan. The first bite was disappointing. It must have been last year's corn, or maybe the year before. Later Wayne told me those vendors buy the corn in large bags for next to nothing, boil it up, and charge the two yuan to unsuspecting foreigners. No local person would buy it, they'd know better.

After eating, Lynn decided she wanted to buy another pen as a gift. We had walked miles looking for just the right pen. We looked in Beijing, Yangshuo, Guilin, and Qingdao. While in Qingdao we had the poor lady pull out every pen in the large glass display case. Then we walked out with nothing. The lady was not happy. We ended up buying the pen from another store. Now Lynn wanted to go back to the same lady and look for another kind of pen. As soon as we approached the counter we could see the same lady stiffen. We looked at all the pens and left without anything...again! Then we walked to the book store and bought a second pen there.

Wayne wanted to treat us to another meal. Bill's associates in China had already treated us to a grand meal the day we arrived but now Wayne wanted to take us to a seafood restaurant. I guess he saw how we readily downed the abalone the first night so he wanted to expose us to still different kinds of seafood.

When we walked into the restaurant he handed the hostess a bag full of live crab. He told me later he bought his crab an hour ago. "It's fresher." he said. I guess so. He had been to the same market we visited on Sunday and bought the crab while we were getting ready for dinner tonight.

The hostess brought us up to the third floor and into a private room. The place settings were are rainbow of colors. There was a large etched round glass lazy-susan.

Wayne excused himself and went downstairs to choose what we would be served. Later he showed us the fish tanks. It was like walking through the Atlanta Aquarium. Every variety of fish: shell, bone or soft was available. Fine Chinese dining means choosing from live animals. He'd never just order from a menu. Before he orders he wants to see the food he'll eat.

Wow, what a meal. There were 13 courses, 4 cold, 8 hot, and soup. I'm not sure I can remember everything we ate. Here's what I remember:

The sea urchins were very good. It was like eating custard. They prepare them by pouring egg into an opening in the shell and then cook the meet and egg together. Fantastic. The squid was about six inches long including tentacles. When I bit into one (I had to take bites as they are too large to swallow whole) I saw it's body stuffed with clear golden eggs. The meat was very tender. It was very good.

None of the food had any fish smell. Even the soup was not fishy. It looked like chicken broth with white chicken meet floating around. It was softer than chicken. It was like eating the Hawaiian mahimahi (tuna) fish in a broth.

I didn't want Wayne to order expensive wine again. The wine we had the other night with him was the best wine that China makes. So I told him: "Women zai Qingdao, dui ba?" "Dui."he said. "Wo zai Qingdao hai meiyou he Qingdao pijiu. Weishenme?" (We are in Qingdao right? I still haven't had a Qingdao beer. Why?" He joked: "Because we've drank it all up!" "ai you" (So sad.) I told him.

When the brewery opened in Qingdao they promised the townspeople that Qingdao beer served in Qingdao would be no older than a week. Indeed, our beer was only two days young. It went well with the fish as did the second best wine in China that Wayne still ordered for us.

When walked out, three men arm in arm swerved and stumbled in front of us and spilled out the front door. In China it's common to go drinking after work with your boss or buddies. This is when the most business is transacted. Wayne looked at me and apologized. "This is the way it's done in China." he lamented.

I'd be afraid to complete any business deal with a drunk, but that's just me. What do I know?

We are going back to Beijing tomorrow, a couple of days before returning home. It's sad to leave our new-found friends here. We need to return.

...dave
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.PreviousNext

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Published by Dave Terry
on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 10:02 AM.

PreviousNext
We decided we haven't spent enough money on goods so Ruth and Lynn found yet another market in Qingdao.

This one is the best so far. No pushiness, no grabbing, no yelling. Just a simple stroll through floors and floors of goods. Everything you can imagine is for sale here too. China has lots of goods for sale. It's a buyer's market.

Ruth has been looking for a pearl necklace so finally got one here. Lynn said they were so cheap she got one too. Our driver, on loan from Bill's company, took us to the market and then back to get something to eat. Of course, I needed a Starbucks fix.

While we ate, he went out and had our chops (Chinese stamps) carved by computer. Very professional. Even though I bought a stone chop in Yongshuo, the sculpted wooden chops of a horse and lion were very cool. They came with a magnetic cap so you don't get ink all over the desk.

We got some pictures printed of the folks we met in the villages and had the concierge print the Chinese addresses on the envelopes. I think village folks will get a kick out of having a picture of themselves and their child. I'd love to visit them again some day to see if they still have it displayed in their homes. We didn't see any photographs displayed anywhere in their homes. They are very poor farmers.

At the Kodak printing store I had a little trouble communicating with the Xiaojie (Miss) about what images I wanted, how big, and how many. To make matters worse my computer generated the the images from RAW format but didn't add the JPG suffix so their programs couldn't read them. "Wo Keyi ma?" (Can I?) is a great phrase to memorize because I showed her how to add the suffix and she was ecstatic. After that it was a breeze to get the pictures printed. I think I had 10 4x6 pictures printed for just a $2. She even cropped them for me. When she got the crop right I'd say: "Hao de." (That's good.) I learned that from the guy in front of me.

By the evening we didn't want to go out again. We had cocktails in the lounge and tried the Korean restaurant in the hotel. This hotel looked like it may have been a five star some years ago but I think they may have lost some of the stars since. The Korean restaurant was quiet so we went in and ordered. The strange thing was that no matter what we ordered they would point to the same picture on the menu. (Again, no one speaks English.) "Michael Jackson xi huan." (Michael Jackson likes this one.) So we took that as a hint that we ought to order the one dish. We did, but when it came it didn't look like the picture we had been pointing to. Lynn called the waitress over while Bill rolled his eyes. "It's okay Lynn. You will not be able to communicate what you want anyway. Let's just eat this." When the waitress came over and Lynn pointed out that the food "bu yiyang" (not the same) as the menu the waitress said: "It's only a picture, not the real thing." Oh, that explains it then.

But it was food and it wasn't bad. The wasabi (Japanese green hot paste) was the most potent I've ever had. I nearly burned out my sinuses. Yikes!

...dave
"Adventure is worth while in itself." -Amelia EarhartPreviousNext

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Published by Dave Terry
on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:03 AM.

PreviousNextWhat a clean city Qingdao is! It's weather is cool and dry. It reminds me of San Francisco this time of year.

Wayne and Susan (Bill's associates) took us on a driving tour of Qingdao. We started in the fish market. Here's the deal. I dressed in my very best so that I would not embarrass Bill in front of his business associates. It turns out that I was the best dressed weiguoren in the entire fish market. I wore slacks, black penny loafers, a red stripped shirt, and tweed sport coat. Come to think of it I was the ONLY weiguoren, besides Bill, in the market.

We saw all kinds of live seafood displayed in buckets and pans - slugs, snails, turtles, oysters, baby abalone, sting rays, and flounder. The flounder is the strangest kind of thing. It lays flat and has both of it's eyes on top. If you've never seen nature shows about this fish, you are in for a treat. They start out swimming like all other fish. Eventually they lie flat in the sand. Their right eye migrates to the top to join the left eye. It then buries itself in the sand and waits for unsuspecting prey. You can buy them fresh here for just $100 U.S. dollars. I'll take two.

The oysters looked good. I was telling Susan about how we used to eat these in Hawaii. Just put them on the barbecue until they pop open. Then douse them with cocktail sauce and Tobasco and drown them down with a beer. Wow! Great stuff. She said she didn't have a BBQ. I suggested it would be worth buying one.

Wayne drove us from one end of Qingdao's seaside to the other. There were weddings everywhere. Some companies will take the pictures of the couple weeks or months before the wedding and then give out the pictures at the celebration. We counted over a hundred couples. The cost is about $400 U.S. which seemed like a good price to me. It's an all day deal starting in the studio in the morning and ending on the beach in the afternoon. Some of the couples looked exhausted this afternoon.

We walked along the boardwalk of Qingdao and took a few frames. We also stopped by the site of the 2008 Olympics in China. Although Beijing will host the Olympics, Qingdao will host all of the water sports. I took some pictures of the concrete construction site to show my dad. Some of the forms looked the same as I'd seen at American sites. The only thing missing was a crane. It'll be interesting to watch the Olympics in 2008 and be able to recognize the places we visited.

We rounded a corner and saw two old men sitting on stools in front of an old store. The wall behind them was missing some of it's stucco and the afternoon sun cast it's shadow across it's rough exterior. Bill and Lynn jumped out to take a photo and left the van door open. An old woman came up the street and peered into the dark interior and looked at me so I said: Nihao. (maybe I should have said Ninhao since she was older?) She looked at me with a serious stare and said: "Bu renshi ni." (I don't know you) And then she told me her age. Wayne translated the nuances of the short exchange. I thought I may have offended her but Wayne said she was just apologizing for not remembering who I was. She said her memory wasn't what it used to be. Oh. Meiwenti (no problem).

We took a little rest before dinner but was not expecting what was next. Wayne reserved a private room in a local Chinese restaurant. I counted 12 dishes. They kept coming. Then he brought out a 1992 bottle of Chateau Changyu Cabernet, China's best red. It was fantastic. We had deep fried oysters and baby abalone. I think they may have been the same ones I saw earlier at the market. The abalone was very tender. It was absolutely divine.

I brought along my iBook and Wayne, Susan and Lee politely watched some of my pictures float by. Afterward Lee told me he has a friend that is one of the best photographers in all of China. This guy has view cameras (8x10 negatives, that's right, the NEGATIVES are 8 inches by 10 inches). He once camped on top of a mountain for three days waiting for the best light. National Geographic bought one of his great photos and printed it in their magazine. Sheesh, I wish I'd had known all this before; I'd have never showed any of my pictures. Lee says he's got all kinds of camera gear himself. He's also a photographer. Susan volunteered that the guy that spent three days on the mountain is now divorced. His wife couldn't stand his obsession. I turned to Ruth and asked her if I'd ever left her for three days to take a photo. She said: "No." So I turned to Lee and said: "See this is why I'm not so good."

When Wayne dropped us off earlier at our hotel he gave us bags (that is, more than one bag) of fruit. He bought it while we were eating lunch earlier in the day. They were so big and heavy it took both of us to carry it up to the room. We were overwhelmed by his generosity.

Ruth and Lynn came back to the room to play some Scrabble. I laid down and began dreaming about sea food and China. Qingdao is a city I could easily live in.

...dave
物是人非 (wushirenfei) Things stay the same just the people change. -Chinese proverbPreviousNext

We wanted to pick up some Chinese language learning books so went to the largest book store in the city. They didn't have what I was looking for. The same books on Amazon cost $30 each. Bill bought his in Beijing's Wangfujing for $8 each. It seemed so strange to go into a book store and not be able to read a single book! Weird. Some looked really interesting too. Rats.

While I was looking for books in the Chinese Learning section a young student approached me. He said that he's a paid trannslator. He's currently trying to translate a technical business book from Chinese to English but he's having problems with a section on injection molding. He wanted to know if I could help him translate it into proper English. He began a lengthly explanation but I was having a little problem following him. Something about injection molding procedures. After several attempts at explaining a technical paragraph I suggested that he send me the rough translation by email. I'd smooth out the translation and send it back. He seemed very grateful. He says he gets 180 yuen per hour for his translation services. That's about $20 an hour. We parted by exchanging email. I haven't received the text yet. I really hope I can help him out. One thing is for sure, China needs more English translators. Some of the signs I've seen caused me to do a double take, others I simply could not understand even though they were in my language.

I bought a gangbi (fountain pen) while in the book store. I couldn't resist. It cost about $11 U.S. but in the States it would cost about $50 to $100. What a deal. Not as good a deal as in Yangshou where I bought two gangbis for just $2 each. They write just a well. Okay, so they didn't come with a box.

We were tired so headed to the food court to get something to eat. (It's tought out here walking all over the place. I'm so glad I have great shoes. My feet never bothered me a bit.) Yeah, it's true, Qingdao has a modern shopping mall complete with a food court. If you transported yourself to Qingdao and walked in, you'd think you were in any United States shopping mall. Except, of course, for the Chinese signs. Oh, there's one other difference. In the American shopping malls the center isles are filled with chocolate and candy stands. China's "candy" stands offer fish. There are bins and bins of dried fish, shredded fish, shrimp, and sea slugs. Yummy stuff. This gives the place a sort of seashore aroma.

I did manage to find a Starbucks in the mall. It's exactly like any you'd see in the states. Unfortunately they didn't have Mocha Valencia, my favorite. They had mocha coffee and Carmel Macchiato. But those are so last week. I really, really wanted to try a Mocha Valencia in China. Maybe by next visit they'll have it on their picture menu.

Buying lunch is interesting. In the U.S. you order, pay, and go. In Qingdao's food court you select what you want, walk to the center and buy a plastic card with the value encoded on a magnetic strip (looks like a credit card), then go back and order, then pay, then sit down, then wait until your number is called. So there is lots of walking around and by the time you get your meal you ARE hungry. Oh, and they reuse the wooden chopsticks so if you are at all squeamish, bring your own.

I really intended to do a little more sketching on the trip but if I did I'd have taken less pictures and done less on the blog. Nonetheless I was able to do some silly little sketches while waiting for Lynn or Ruth to decide on what they were going to buy.

...dave
"There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." -Beverly SillsPreviousNext

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Published by Dave Terry
on Sunday, April 23, 2006 at 10:05 AM.

PreviousNextThese beds are like oak boards. Man are they tough on the back. I pulled the sheet back and discovered that I'm sleeping on a just a box spring. What happened to my mattress?

We have a nice console between the beds that controls our TV, room lights, and the bed lights. Trouble is the knob on my side controls Ruth's light and the knob on her side controls my light. But at least they work.

There's a hot pot in all the rooms. Ours has it's own separate shelf halfway up the wall so that the cord can reach the outlet two feet from the ceiling. Don't ask. Who knows?

But those are just cosmetic things. The disfunction is in the bathroom. As in our other bathroom the entire place is tiled and the entire room is a shower. Never mind there are three different kinds of tile. When they ran out of one kind they simply started using another. Again just cosmetic. The difficulty Ruth had was with the shower controls and sprayer. The controls are on the left wall but the shower sprayer is on the right. The water tube loops up the wall on the left, through a hole in the ceiling, across the top and then back down the wall on the right. If you don't want the sprayer to get you in the back, you have to remove it from the holder and face it away from you. But it's not quite long enough to walk over and reach the left side so you kind of spread eagle, one hand on the sprayer and the other on the knobs until the temperature is correct. Ruth learned how to do that. I heard some yells last night from the direction of the bathroom before she got it right.

For me the challenge is the sink. The faucet is loose and the hot and cold water controls are the reverse of the shower. This keeps things interesting. When I run the water it just drains onto the floor (why not?) and runs between my legs to the shower drain in the floor of the bathroom. This morning, when I ran the hot water for shaving, I nearly burned my toes off. Now I know why they provide the rubber slippers.

Just about the time we got used to these things it's time to leave. We have to leave later today.

The girls went off to Longji while I ate breakfast. I'm to meet them in an hour or so. While eating I met Susanna Thorntons who is riding through Hong Kong and China with a destination of UK on, get this, a bicycle! When you get bored of this blog check our her blog here. It includes audio too. Cool.

We took a two mile walk along the narrow stone foot path to a small village of Longji. The foot path is about two feet wide, sometimes less in places. Often there is water and mud running over the stones so it's a bit dicey. If you slip, it's a long way down. There are no handrails out here. Occasionally I get a whiff of pigs, ox, or chickens. We're in the country now.

Few tourists go to the smaller villages. Mostly they come on busses to the parking area. The tours swarm up the hill, have a beer and walk back down. But you get a better feel for the place if you stay at least a few days. Since Longji is two miles away it doesn't get the tourist busses that Pingan gets. So the people lean out their window and say hello as we pass below. We say a few things to them in Chinese. They invite us in for tea and a meal but we just sit and have tea with them. Sometimes they have a small child that is at first shy but eventually opens up when they see their mother laugh with the strangers. One small little boy of two years wanted to show me his socks. I took the picture and showed him his face on the viewing screen of the digital. He smiled. The mother is happy to see her picture too.

We walked around the village but had to get back to our waiting driver at the bottom of the hill. We had a quick lunch and headed down. Lynn took the easy way down by chair. I let the woman carry my bags this time. I knew them by now and trusted them. I paid 10 yuan ($1.50), the best $1.50 I've spent on the trip so far.

We had to fly out to Qingdao but our flight wasn't until 9:30, or so we thought. We wasted time in Guilin talking to a man that's an exchange student for NYU in January. He's leaving his wife and beautiful son for a year while he teaches in New York City.

At 7:00 p.m. on the way to the airport Lynn checked our tickets and discovered the flight was for 8:20! Yikes. Our driver, Xu, floored it and got us there 45 minutes before the plane took off.

I sat back, exhausted from all the hiking. I'm coming down with a cold so the flight didn't feel so great. But it was smooth and got us into Qingdao by 12:00 a.m. Bill and his business associates picked us up and took us to the hotel.

The room looks out into the Yellow Sea. What a spectacular view. But more about that later.

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Published by Dave Terry
on Saturday, April 22, 2006 at 10:06 AM.

PreviousNextWe decided to change hotels because, well because of several reasons.

It all started with the broken bed lamps. There was only one working bulb in the center of the room. It wasn't too bad during the day but at night it felt like a prison cell. I went down to ask the owner if we could move one room over. She came up to confirm the lights were not working and said she'd send her husband up to fix it. (This is the way these things are run. It's a wife/husband team. He's the fix-it guy and she takes the money, just like in America.) Anyway it's about 8:00 p.m. and I'm exhausted from all the hiking. I want to go to bed. So I sat and waited for him. Finally at 8:30 I found him in the kitchen cooking for some guests. (Between the two of them they do everything.)

He came up, removed the panel next to the bed and pulled out live wires. I'm thinking: Isn't this stuff 220 volts? He's going at it with a screwdriver and pliers. He couldn't fix it so found me another room. That was last night. In the morning Lynn said she left some candies out and heard some munching. Little harry rodents had located her candy stash. She slept with the light on. The night before she wasn't too game on moving. Now she was ready.

So we went to the hotel at the very top of the mountain. Hotel LanYueGe. This meant more climbing so the woman from the new hotel sent her husband down to pick up our luggage. When he picked up Lynn's bag he called for reinforcements. I told him she had picked up a few rocks from yesterday's hike. Between himself and another woman with a basket they carried our stuff up another 200 steps to the next hotel.

We got settled in and then went out for an easy hike. We walked all around lookout 1 and 2 in Pingan. It took us about four hours. It was interesting to see all the channels and waterways routing water to the terraces. In some places the sounds and sights reminded me of the computer game Myst. And get this, while on the hike Lynn got a crystal clear cell phone call way out here. China's cell service is unparalleled.

We met the friendly old man from yesterday on the hike (the one that wants the picture of himself). He was picking tea leaves. He invited us to his place for some tea. We think he said tonight or did he say tomorrow? He said 9:00. He can't mean 9:00 at night for tea. Can he? He's so friendly. He talks to us in rapid Chinese. I only get the gist of what he says and sometimes not even that. We talked about the weather and I asked if the terraces would fill up for a picture by tomorrow. He laughed and told me it'll take an entire month of May to fill the terraces. Too bad I so wanted reflected blue sky in my pictures. We parted ways from the path, he with his basket of tea leaves and me with my backpack of camera gear. "Ming tian jian." (See you tomorrow.) Ruth and Lynn bought some tea and peppers from a little old lady at the top of the hill.

We came back and had lunch at our new favorite place. They serve some fried green beans with roasted garlic. It's to die for. They are so tasty. We ordered noodles, rice and egg, and sweet and sour chicken. I got a beer because, well because, I don't trust the water. Really! Besides the local beer is great.

Ruth and Lynn decided to play a game of scrabble and I uploaded the 89 pictures I took on the hike into my iBook. I wish I could say every picture was great but I deleted over half, in fact, almost two-thirds of them. This is how I convince people I'm a good photographer, I delete a lot of stuff. I now have three good pictures of China I can show people.

While I uploaded the photographs the girls from the hotel watched my computer screen. I didn't really mind. I was hoping they'd recognize the people in pictures I'd taken. "Nimen renshi tamen?" (Do you know them?) I'd ask and point to the screen. They'd get real excited and tell me the names. Some of them are hard to say. I tried saying the name of the little one on the woman's back and was corrected several times. I think they finally gave up on me. The names are so foreign to a Westerner's ear. It's hard to associate the sound with anything I know.

While I worked with the images and Ruth and Lynn played Scrabble a group of carpenters were working on the place next door. With each fresh cut of wood the scent of fresh cedar floated through the warm air. The weather is a perfect 70 degrees. The sun peeked out from the clouds briefly and a took a picture from our room window of the girls below. You'll notice our laundry hanging out the window. That's just the way they do it here. They wash and then hang the clothes to dry. Clothes dryers are for wimps. Besides it sounds better. "Clothes washed and then naturally sun dried." It's so green sounding.

Talk about sounds. All the men here can hack phlegm very well. It's a disgusting sound, at least to a Westerner, but no one else seems to mind. Usually it's precipitated with a nasty snorting sound to collect the nostril phlegm first. Then it all gets ejected in one sirupy loogie into the street. It's wise to step aside when you begin to hear the sound. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Sometimes I see a NO SPITTING sign in the weirdest places and I think Who would spit here? (Like the inside of a building.) There's talk of finning those who persist with this nasty habit. Sometimes there's no spitting though. I've seen some just hold one nostril and blow out into the street with the other. It's the same disgusting stuff mind you, just aspirated. What would the sign be for that? NO PHLEGMING? I wonder what one of those universal signs with the red line and circle would look like. Never mind.

When I think about it, it's really not any worse than smoking in public. In some ways smoking is worse. A public smoker forces everyone else to participate in their nasty habit, regardless of vicinity. Not to mention the cigarette butts on the sidewalks, gutters and highways. Really how is this any different then hacking phlegm? But I digress.

...dave
All cats love fish but fear to wet their paws. -Chinese proverbPreviousNext